United States Sixth Circuit

In a Federal Tort Claims Act and Privacy Act case brought by staff members at the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) claiming that defendants allowed an employee roster containing plaintiffs' sensitive personal information to be disclosed to improper persons, including prison inmates and other BOP staff, district court's judgment is affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded where: 1) district court did not clearly err in finding that the agency's "inadvertent" final act was willful within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. section 522a(g)(4) because a court may consider the entire course of conduct that resulted in the Privacy Act violation in making its required finding under section 552a(g)(4); 2) district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing a non-rebuttable adverse evidentiary inference of disclosure as a sanction for the defendants' destruction of relevant evidence with the knowledge that the evidence would be necessary for known potential claims; 3) district court did not commit clear error in its alternative finding that the plaintiffs did prove disclosure by a preponderance of the evidence; and 4) district court was correct in finding that "future protective measures" damages are unavailable, but the district court erred in denying the plaintiffs' "lost time" damages on the ground that their failure to assert valid FTCA claims precluded them from recovering damages for their valid Privacy Act claims.

Appellate Information

• Argued 12/03/2009
• Decided 09/27/2010
• Published 09/27/2010

Judges

• MOORE

Court

• United States Sixth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Steve Frank, Douglas L. McSwain